


Take Me Out

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Melancholy, Miscommunication, Overthinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29751453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: Tsukishima does a lot of thinking. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is still up in the air.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 12
Kudos: 80
Collections: Haikyuu Writer Jukebox Round One - Mitski





	Take Me Out

**Author's Note:**

> for the song "jobless monday"

Tsukishima does a lot of thinking.

In the morning, he thinks about how many minutes he has left to leave his house before he risks being late to practice. On the court, he thinks about how to set up the block quicker, how to read the hitters before they realize they’re being read. At lunch, he thinks about how many times Nishinoya has snuck extra food onto his plate like he wouldn’t notice. Lying down for the night, he thinks about the next few days of summer training and how long they’re going to be, how sore his legs are already. There are a lot of things he has to think about.

Right now, he’s mostly thinking about ending things.

It made more sense when they were both still in high school, when they saw each other every few months for an excruciating practice match. Back then, they were both aiming for the same goal. It was impossible for them to avoid running into each other. Now that Kuroo’s in college and Tsukishima’s a second year, though, it’s not the same.

“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Hinata bellows during stretches on the second morning of camp. “I wonder how good Lev is by now.”

“Probably way better than you,” Tsukishima says, eyes half closed, twisting until his back aches.

Hinata huffs. “You’re just mad ‘cause you won’t be able to block him.”

“I’m definitely not.”

“You’re jealous because he’s taller than you.”

“Of all the people in this room,” Tsukishima says, exhaling and twisting to the other side, “you’re going to say that to me?” He casts a sidelong glance and smirks. “From all the way down there?”

Hinata’s face collapses on itself in rage. “Tsukishima, you bast—”

“Enough chitchat!” The sound of Ennoshita’s hands clapping doesn’t resound quite as well as it should, but it’s still louder than it has been. Progress is progress. “Focus on stretching, guys. You wouldn’t wanna pull something today,” he says, eyes glinting, “and miss out on kicking Nekoma’s teeth in tomorrow.”

“Hell yeah, Chikara!” Nishinoya cheers, body folded in half, three stretches ahead of everyone else. “That’s the attitude!”

“Thanks,” Ennoshita says. Without turning his eyes in Nishinoya’s direction, he sighs. “Now get on the same stretch as the rest of us.”

“Aw, come on. Daichi would’ve let me.”

“Good boys shouldn’t tell lies.”

Nishinoya groans and untwists himself, sits down on the floor in time with everyone else to reach for his toes. “This sucks. Captain Chikara is no fun.”

Getting used to Ennoshita as captain has been a winding road. The first practice without the third years, even he forgot he was in charge, turned to look for Daichi’s instruction only to find everyone else looking at him like lost children latching onto the first adult they could find. Nowadays, they’re more accustomed to it, but every once in a while, Ennoshita’s neck still twitches like he’s about to look for Daichi, and Hinata starts to turn to ask Asahi how his spike was, and Kageyama almost calls out to Sugawara for feedback on his last set. And everybody notices but pretends not to.

Even now, Tsukishima still has trouble chewing on it. The third years are really gone. Rather, they aren’t third years anymore. Now Tanaka and crew are the third years, and Tsukishima’s a second year. Kuroo isn’t the captain of Nekoma anymore, and when Nekoma comes for the practice match tomorrow, he won’t be with them. Of course not. Tsukishima will count himself lucky Hinata didn’t mention that, though he probably lacks the emotional awareness to realize it’s something he could have mentioned.

It’s been months since they’ve seen each other face-to-face. Tsukishima gets it. Tokyo isn’t exactly down the road. All they have is texts and the occasional call, and Kuroo says, “I miss you,” and Tsukishima says it back, and a month later, they do it all over again. Every now and then, he catches himself thinking he’d like to just hop on the bullet train and spirit himself away for a little while, run around Tokyo with Kuroo and pretend they’re on equal ground. That’s the problem with doing so much thinking. Eventually he thinks himself right back into hell.

The issue is that they aren’t on equal ground. The issue is that Tsukishima is still just some kid and Kuroo isn’t anymore, or maybe he still is but not quite as much, and the difference doesn’t really matter. The issue is that Tsukishima is tired of pretending treading water like this is going to get them anywhere. The issue is that he wants one less thing to stay up thinking about and this is the easiest thread to cut.

“Tsukki.” Yamaguchi’s voice taps right at the base of where all Tsukishima’s headaches start, and it’s not even his fault.

“What?”

“It’s time for laps.” The rest of the team has already left the gym, kicking up dirt clouds under the sun outside. A crinkle works up between Yamaguchi’s eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Tsukishima squeezes his eyes shut for one long moment and holds onto the quiet in his head until the sound of distant footsteps starts to grate at him. “Let’s go.”

In the first place, Tsukishima was never the kind of guy that hoped for things. He was having a great time never hoping for anything, cruising by and sleeping easy. If only Kuroo hadn’t decided he should try to hope for something every once in a while then forced him to do it. And then do it again.

“Go out with me,” Kuroo said one night during training camp, walking the concrete path from the gym to the lodgings after a too-long session of blocking practice. Most of the other guys were already showering or sleeping, except wild animals like Bokuto and Hinata, and his voice resonated a little too long in the lukewarm night air. The moon was high, and its light dripped down the side of Kuroo’s face, over a sideways smile.

“Huh?” Tsukishima said, throat hot. For a second, he was sure he misheard with the way Kuroo said it out of nowhere, like he was giving blocking advice. That was probably exactly what he was going for, grinning like that.

“Go out with me,” he said again, slowing his steps and leaning against one of the support beams at the side of the path. All the shadows seemed to skate around him, making room for the moonlight to hold him in crystal focus. Tsukishima stepped closer without meaning to.

“Well,” he coughed, “frankly, I can’t be fraternizing with the enemy.” His cheeks were hot, which he told himself to chalk up to overexertion.

“Don’t be like that.” Kuroo held his hand out like he was waiting for something. Tsukishima took the bait like an idiot. “Think of it like Romeo and Juliet.” Both of their palms were sweaty, but Tsukishima was desperate trying to figure out whose was sweatier.

“Where we both die?” He stared at Kuroo’s thumb swiping an arc over his knuckles. “That’s a tragedy, you know.”

“I’d check to see if you were just sleeping before I drank poison.”

“Why am I Juliet?”

“Aren’t you?” With one swift tug, he pulled Tsukishima a few inches closer. As always, he had that way of dragging you in. The sound of the night living around them was intoxicating. His breath brushed over Tsukishima’s neck. “So, what do you say, Tsukki?”

“To what?”

Kuroo rolled his eyes. “Going out with me,” he said, teeth flashing in a smile. Tsukishima’s eyes narrowed.

“You think I’m gonna say yes, don’t you?”

A small chuckle ghosted out from between Kuroo’s lips. Beams of moonlight were catching on every part of him, hanging like ice. “I do,” he said, grip tightening on Tsukishima’s hand. “I think you want to.”

Tsukishima exhaled slowly, focus on the white heat at the tips of his ears. “I’ll think about it,” he said. One attempt to tug away his hand, but it was fruitless. His heart was hardly in it anyway. Kuroo was grinning like he’d just heard a juicy secret, couldn’t wait to spill it to the next set of ears.

“Don’t say that,” he said, voice low. “That’s basically a yes, isn’t it?”

“It’s not a—”

“Isn’t it?” Another little pull. From a far enough angle, they might’ve looked like they were kissing. Tsukishima’s fingers were dangerously tangled up in Kuroo’s. “The Tsukki I know looooooves to say no.” His hand was a million degrees. “But that wasn’t a no, you know?”

This was always how it was going to turn out, Tsukishima figured. For starters, Kuroo always got under his skin just the right way that made him hard to say no to. And he’d started trying to have fun, letting himself want things. Wouldn’t be a stretch to say Kuroo noticed he was one of those things. “Fine,” he said, testing the upper limits of a whisper.

“No need to sound so reluctant.” Kuroo’s voice was stained with the flavor of a laugh. With his other hand, he grabbed Tsukishima’s shoulder and pulled him in for a hasty kiss. His lips were salty, but his tongue wasn’t, made Tsukishima shiver in the half-warm night air.

“Gross.”

“Sorry,” Kuroo said, but he was smiling like he wasn’t. “Next time I won’t be so sweaty.”

Naturally, that was a lie.

In the fourth set, Karasuno is leading by three, and they’ve won two sets already. Everybody’s eyes are glowing, ravenous for the win. Tanaka shouts something out, and when everyone else echoes him, Tsukishima just keeps staring toward the court with glazed eyes, sipping at his water bottle and waiting to rotate back in.

He wouldn’t say it’s that he doesn’t care. It’s coming up on a year, after all, since he quit not caring cold turkey. There’s something off about the match, though, some nagging feeling that they’re not facing their actual enemies but instead clones of them, sent in as a distraction that they let themselves get wrapped up in. Tsukishima doesn’t want to let himself think that the other side of the court just looks wrong because for the first time Kuroo isn’t on it, but he’s dangerously close.

Whistle. Shuffling. Nishinoya is lunging back to the warm-up zone before Tsukishima has a chance to focus. He plants a nice, hard slap between Tsukishima’s shoulder blades when he arrives. “Get out there, man!” he says, grin wild and sharp at the edges. “Block ‘em like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

Sauntering to the court, Tsukishima feels out of place. All around him, everyone is radiating a sort of fervor, gnashing their fangs and glaring red, but none of it touches him. Even Nekoma’s setter looks engrossed, gaze darting all around the court, fingers trembling. When Tsukishima stuffs a spike, everyone cheers and claps his shoulders, but his chest doesn’t burn that way it used to. Looking around, he gets the feeling everyone else is under some kind of hypnosis that he managed to dodge. For once, he wishes he were with them.

“You really had me worried, Yamaguchi,” Hinata says as they walk down the hill after the match, slapping Yamaguchi on the back. Ennoshita promised to treat everyone as a reward for beating Nekoma, and no matter how much Tsukishima tried to fabricate a reason he couldn’t make it, he still got roped in. “I totally thought you were gonna choke on that first serve.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Yamaguchi groans. He jabs at Hinata with an elbow and misses. “I pretty much always get them over now, you know.”

“Hinata’s jealous because he can still barely hit it over the net on a good day.”

“What the—Kageyama, you piece of—”

“Everybody behave,” Ennoshita says, grin too goofy to be taken seriously. “You’re disturbing the peace.”

“Lighten up, Chikara!” Nishinoya pummels his shoulders with a flurry of punches. “We won! You don’t have to act all stern.”

“Yeah, you’re not Daichi,” Tanaka adds, slapping him on the back. If it were Tsukishima, he wouldn’t appreciate the beating, but Ennoshita seems to be enjoying it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ennoshita says. “Now’s not the time to get cocky, though. The Inter High qualifiers are coming up.” He squeezes one hand in a tight fist. “That’s where we really need to kick some ass.”

“Chikara said ‘ass’! He said the a-word!”

Tsukishima walks a few steps behind the rest of them. He’s tired enough from the exertion of the game, and watching the rest of them overflowing with energy makes him even more exhausted. If he didn’t have any pride to hang onto, he’d collapse right here in the street and start sobbing. He doesn’t even want to sob, but his eyes are stinging with the urge. What does he have to sob about in the first place? They won.

He pulls out his phone and keeps his eyes on it while he walks, thumb swishing back and forth over the screen without accomplishing anything. It’s a good distraction until it isn’t, until he keeps opening up his contacts and scrolling down, looking at his messages, reading back through the Encyclopedia Brittanica of _I miss you_ ’s. Maybe Kuroo has heard something about the practice match today, and maybe he’ll send a text about it later. Tsukishima has to beat him to the punch.

As they round the corner to the ramen shop, he taps out a message. Short and to the point, as he’s always been known to be.

 _I think we should break up_.

The first thing Tsukishima hears in the morning is his mother’s voice. It’s muffled coming up from the first floor and drifting through the door, but if he focuses, he can make out the words. “I’ll go and wake him up. He’s slept in long enough.”

He can’t hear anybody else, but she pauses like she’s listening to someone talk. Dad, maybe? But that certainly doesn’t sound like the way she normally talks to him. Tsukishima starts to rouse himself when he hears her footsteps coming menacing up the stairs, sits up straight and pulls his glasses on just before she gives one courtesy knock and thrusts the door open anyway. She blinks at him a moment before drawing her mouth up in a smile.

“Morning, Kei,” she says. “If you’re awake, you should come downstairs.”

“Why?” He feels around for his phone on the nightstand, nearly knocks it into the crack between the bed and the wall. “I’m tired.”

“Because,” his mother says, “you can’t just stay in bed all day.”

“Is somebody here?”

She looks at him for too long not to be suspicious. Something awful is gathering in the lowest pit of his stomach. “Come downstairs and you’ll see,” she says, and then the door is closing behind her.

Tsukishima gets dressed a little more slowly than usual, a side effect of the dread that’s started to flower out from his gut. He stays quiet all the while, listening for anything that might tip him off about what horrors lie in wait at the bottom of the stairs, but his ears don’t pick up anything. Every now and then, his mom’s voice reaches one of those over-polite peaks it tends to hit when she’s talking to a stranger. It’s not Yamaguchi, then, but Tsukishima already figured as much. Usually he would just come right upstairs regardless.

As he descends the stairs, he tries to rationalize his way back to feeling normal. It could be anyone there, after all. Maybe it’s Ennoshita coming by to say something after the camp. It could even be Hinata or Kageyama or both of them, desperate for help on some homework they should’ve done a week ago. Maybe it’s even one of Akiteru’s teammates coming by to taunt him into showing up at a practice match. Of course, Tsukishima has never been the type to have exceptional luck. Thinking this much has never done anything but bite him in the ass.

“You’re finally down,” his mother huffs. His eyes can’t even find her. “Your friend here came to visit all the way from Tokyo, and you can’t even be bothered to wake up on time.”

Right at this moment, Tsukishima is doing some more thinking.

He thinks about whether it’s possible to fake his death and get away with it for just long enough that it’s convincing, but not so much that it puts his mom through severe emotional distress. He thinks about how quickly he could run back up the stairs and whether he’d be able to lock the door before anybody could follow in behind him. He thinks about whether he’d be able to make the jump from the window without breaking anything, whether he’d be able to get away fast enough even if he did manage to land on his feet.

Mostly, he’s thinking that he never should’ve woken up today.

“Hey, Tsukki.”

Kuroo looks the exact way Tsukishima always remembers him, hair sticking up like a wild animal’s, shoulders slightly hunched but firm nonetheless. He’s always had a way of taking up so much space. Even now, Tsukishima feels like he’ll suffocate if he takes a single step closer. Kuroo offers a meager excuse for a smile that barely touches his cheeks. Tsukishima has never seen him wear a grin like that. Somehow, he feels nauseous.

“Come get lunch with me.”

Neither of them talk until they make it to the restaurant. While they walk, Tsukishima trails behind, watching the shape of Kuroo’s back. He’s as broad as ever, takes strides forward like the world is all waiting on him to get somewhere. His hands tuck deep in his pockets. As much as Tsukishima wants to say something to him, he can’t muster up the guts. He’d sent that text, hadn’t he? He was sure. After all, he looked at it over and over again on his phone screen last night before he fell asleep.

“You’ve gotten taller,” Kuroo says once they’re seated. He unfolds the menu, but looks across at Tsukishima instead of reading it, thumbs pressing dents into the edges. Tsukishima feels like throwing up.

“Why are you here?” he asks. There’s a little quirk in Kuroo’s lips that looks like it wants to be a smile.

“I’ll tell you,” he says, “but first, you have to explain.” He fishes his phone out and holds it halfway across the table, pinched between two fingers like evidence. “What the hell do you mean, we should break up, Tsukki?” Usually, Kuroo looks relaxed and cool, like he’s got a few jokes up his sleeve just waiting to spill out, but he doesn’t look like that now. Tsukishima’s sure he’s never seen Kuroo making a face like this, and he’s spent a lot of time looking. “Where is this coming from?”

Tsukishima gives his jaw a little workout before he says anything, tries every configuration of his teeth in relation to his tongue, but every single one seems like it’ll make him say the wrong thing. To begin with, he’s not sure what the right thing is. “I don’t wanna talk about this here.”

“Then where do you wanna talk about it?” He keeps holding the phone out, fingertips going white against it. Tsukishima catches glimpses of his face in the screen that make it look cracked. “Because I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”

“I… fine. I’ll tell you, so let’s—”

“We’re not going anywhere right now.” Kuroo signals the waiter and slides his phone back into his pocket. “Take a look at the menu, Tsukki. You’re gonna run out of time.”

Tsukishima barely tastes the set meal he ends up ordering. He doesn’t want to finish it. Every bite brings him closer to having to talk, and he doesn’t want to talk about anything. Ideally, Kuroo would have sent a text back saying he agreed, and that would have been the end of it, but of course things couldn’t go that smoothly. Of course, just the thought of such a text gives him stomach cramps, but somehow, someway, it would’ve been easier than this.

It’s beyond weird for Kuroo not to be chatty. Even when they talk on the phone, he usually bites his cheeks trying to talk over himself, and now he doesn’t say anything at all, just chews his food and takes slow sips of his tea. When he’s finished eating, he just watches Tsukishima eat, eyes fixed and hard like he’s trying to read a long equation off a distant whiteboard. Tsukishima’s neck is hot, and so is his chest.

The last bite is staring him in the face, almost threatening. Before he even takes it, Kuroo’s grabbed the bill and headed up to pay for the both of them. So much for never finishing this food. He chokes down the last bit while Kuroo walks back to the table, and it goes down like cement.

“So?” Kuroo says, standing beside his chair, hands flirting with his pockets. “Where to now?”

“Let’s go,” he breathes, “to the museum.”

Truthfully, Tsukishima had always thought he wanted to go to the Sendai City Museum with Kuroo on a date if he ever came to Miyagi and had free time. The train ride from his place would drag a little, but he figured they’d find a way to fill it up, and he’d been wanting for a long time to check out the exhibits on Date Masamune. Kuroo probably wasn’t much into history (something Tsukishima supposed but never directly confirmed), but he was sure they’d both enjoy it, then spend a little time walking around outside, maybe sit by the lake and have something to eat. He probably should’ve just gone on his own once and then told Kuroo about it. This train ride is dragging just like he knew it would, but the silence would be much more bearable if he didn’t have to share it with someone.

He feels like he can breathe again when they finally get off the train, but as they walk the path toward the entrance, he can sense his throat closing up again. On instinct, he pinches the back of Kuroo’s shirt and tugs. He’s not ready for the step Kuroo takes backwards, for the warmth of his back as it collides with Tsukishima’s own knuckles. Kuroo turns around to look at him, and he gulps hard to get himself to talk.

“Let’s take a detour,” he says.

“A detour?”

“We don’t have to go in,” Tsukishima says. “We can talk outside.”

“But you…” Kuroo exhales and closes his eyes, massages his forehead. “Alright. Lead the way.”

They skirt around the outside until they reach one of the benches along the lake. In a better reality, this view would probably look much nicer. At the moment, it looks grim, like some painting where the brush was tinted gray and it bled into all the other colors. The bench sings a little when they sit on it, a grating creak that says it doesn’t want to be here for this either. Tsukishima stares out at the water, hoping the greenness will give him some idea of what to say, but nothing comes to him.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says after a while.

“Hm?”

“You said you would explain,” he says, “and you’re not explaining.”

“I’m not…” Tsukishima breathes out through his teeth. Suddenly, he’s struck by the urge to cry. He’d done so well to avoid it so far, or maybe he’d just been fighting it harder than he realized. “I don’t know. I just think we should break up.”

“Okay, but why?” Kuroo edges closer on the bench, thigh near enough to Tsukishima’s now that they’ll touch if he’s not careful. “I can’t get on board with no reasons.”

“I don’t know!” Tsukishima says again. His hands find their nervous way to his neck and cling to it for life. “We’re just… too different. We’re too far apart, and we’re just doing different things. We don’t have anything in common anymore, you know? I just don’t think there’s any point pretending like we should be together.” His lips start to chap while he’s talking. “We’re just wasting our time.”

For a long time, Kuroo doesn’t talk, and Tsukishima isn’t sure whether he should say more or fling his body into the lake and try to sink all the way to the bottom. When he finally does talk, all he says is, “Jeez, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima expects him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. “What?”

“You have a lot going on upstairs, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Kuroo says, lowering a hand to Tsukishima’s thigh, palm electric, “that you think too much.” He leans his head forward and looks around Tsukishima’s eyes like he’s following a wild animal. “It’s not like we had that much in common to begin with, you know?”

Tsukishima presses his lips into a line. “Maybe, but—”

“Don’t you just feel lonely?”

For a moment, Tsukishima doesn’t have the energy to react. When the moment ends, he feels his face light up boiling red, all the way down his neck and to his ears. There’s no nighttime to cover it up now, no moonlit dark to make him feel hidden, and Kuroo is looking right at him from way too close. He feels naked, exposed completely to the noon air and the breeze that rushes by. The hand on his leg doesn’t move.

“That’s not it.”

“Isn’t it?” Kuroo leans closer. “You feel like I’m leaving you behind, don’t you? Because I’m not in high school anymore, and now we don’t run into each other.” Tsukishima bites down on his lip. “You think I’m not sad I don’t get to just see you without having to plan for it?”

“So we both hate it, then,” Tsukishima says. His face won’t stop being red, and he wishes he could peel it off. “All the more reason—”

“We both know that doesn’t make sense.” His thumb tapdances over Tsukishima’s thigh, and Tsukishima hates how much it soothes him. “I thought you were finally over giving up on everything.”

“I’m not…” Tsukishima chokes halfway through and cradles his face in his palms. By god, he’s not going to cry. His cheeks are still blazing hot. “I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

His breaths come out slowly. What does he want, huh? It’s all about that, he guesses. Ever since the beginning, all Kuroo’s ever seemed to care about is what Tsukishima wants and what he doesn’t and how far he’s willing to go to get it. Truth be told, Tsukishima wants a lot of things. So many more than he’s willing to say. So many that his head is sometimes so full of them that he can’t think about anything else. His breath is shaky between his lips.

“I want us to go somewhere,” he says. “I want us to…”

“You’re saying ‘us’ a lot for someone who tried to dump me over text.”

Tsukishima readies a response, but Kuroo robs him of the chance to say it. He doesn’t taste like sweat this time, but there’s something about his kiss that’s so reminiscent of the wooden floors of the gym, something soft and tired and warm that feels like a summer night in gym shoes. Tsukishima’s hand curls reflexively into Kuroo’s hair, fingertips singeing on the back of his neck.

“I don’t want to break up,” Tsukishima gasps when they break apart.

“I’m glad you realized that,” Kuroo says. “I didn’t know what I was gonna do if my magic kiss didn’t work.”

Tsukishima sighs. “I changed my mind. I can’t stand you.”

“Don’t be like that.” Kuroo sneaks in another kiss, and it’s only now that Tsukishima realizes how easy this bench is to spot from just about anywhere. “That’s just your way of saying you love me, isn’t it?”

“Cut it out,” Tsukishima mumbles into Kuroo’s lips. “People can see us.”

“Don’t worry, Tsukki.” He plants a hand on the back of Tsukishima’s neck and reels himself in one more time. “I love you, too.”

There aren’t many people in the museum, which for some reason gives Kuroo the idea that holding hands is okay, though Tsukishima guesses he’s also partially at fault for letting it happen. “Since we’re here, let’s go in,” Kuroo had said earlier. “You said you wanted us to go somewhere.” He was right, Tsukishima guessed. He probably already figured out from the get-go that Tsukishima wanted the two of them to come here together.

Kuroo makes some offhand joke about one of the armor sets on display as they walk by it, and Tsukishima spots their passing reflections in the plate, pinkies curled around each other, shoulders bumping. “Oh yeah,” Tsukishima says.

“Huh?”

“Why are you here?”

“Because my beloved Tsukki practically begged me to take him on a date.”

Tsukishima slams their shoulders together, knocking them a little of the course of the walkway. “You know what I meant. Here as in Miyagi,” he says. “You said you would tell me.”

Kuroo hums a while, like he’s thinking of a lie. Tsukishima elbows him in the side. “Alright. Well, it’s not because I saw your text and had to come see you.” His head stays on a swivel as they walk, eyes brushing over every exhibit and never meeting Tsukishima’s. “I was already planning to come up and surprise you. It was way too late to get my money back on the hotel and the bullet train ticket, so I still came.” He risks a glance over now, but doesn’t linger for long. “And I thought I might as well go see you anyway.”

Tsukishima hums. Maybe he was expecting something different. If Kuroo had decided to surprise him a day earlier, they wouldn’t even be here. “I see.”

“You think too much when I’m not around, Tsukki.” Kuroo squeezes his hand. “As soon as I saw you, I could tell.”

“Tell what?”

“That you didn’t want to break up.” He sighs and drags them off toward another exhibit, old paintings of historical events framed on the wall. “You just give up too easy.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We should just live together.” Tsukishima’s eyes shoot wide open, and Kuroo’s already smiling something smug when he turns to face him. “Don’t look at me like that. I know that we can’t right now.” He shrugs. “I’m just saying.”

Tsukishima coughs. “Why not just propose while you’re at it?”

When Kuroo laughs, he does it loud enough that a few of the other museumgoers look their way. Instinctively, Tsukishima moves to separate their hands, but Kuroo’s grip is too tight, tightens further at the hint of movement. “You’re so cute, Tsukki,” he says, nudging his side while they walk. “If you wanna get married, you should just say so.”

“But you’re the one who’s proposing.”

“Aren’t you the one who just asked me to?”

He swings their hands around like they’re a couple of kids. In many ways, Tsukishima thinks, they are. And still will be for quite some time. Kuroo glances sidelong at him and winks, lips curling up in the most irritatingly charming grin, that stupid one he always wears.

“In the meantime, you should just come see me in Tokyo,” he says. “Doesn’t matter when. I’ll take you somewhere, just the two of us.”

What a tempting offer. One way or another, Tsukishima figures he’ll find a way to go. He’s got plenty of time to think something up, after all. There are few things he does better than think.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! with this i have finally realized my true form


End file.
